Before the current release, Moriaki PDF version 1 already did most of what people use it for every day. Here’s a short tour of what it offered and how it worked.
Version 1 was the release where Moriaki PDF grew from a couple of handy functions into a proper toolkit. It bundled thirteen separate PDF tools into a single page that runs entirely in your browser — no uploads, no accounts, no installs. If you’re curious where the current version came from, this is the foundation it was built on.
The core idea
Everything in version 1 happened locally. You drop a file into the page, it loads into your browser’s memory, the work is done on your own machine, and you download the result. The file is never sent to a server. That single decision is what made the whole thing fast and private at the same time — there’s no waiting for an upload and a download, and there’s no copy of your document sitting on someone else’s computer.
What version 1 could do
The thirteen tools covered the tasks people reach for most often:
- Merge — combine several PDFs into one, in any order you choose.
- Split — break a multi-page PDF into individual pages, delivered as a ZIP.
- Extract pages — pull a chosen range of pages into a new file.
- Delete pages — remove specific pages or ranges from a document.
- Rotate — permanently fix sideways or upside-down pages.
- Compress — reduce file size for email or storage.
- Image to PDF — turn JPG and PNG images into a single PDF.
- PDF to image — render each page to a high-resolution image.
- Page numbers — stamp sequential numbers onto every page.
- Watermark — overlay text such as “Confidential” across a document.
- Password protect — encrypt a PDF so it needs a password to open.
- Edit metadata — view and change a file’s title, author and other properties.
- Flatten forms — lock filled-in form fields so they can’t be edited.
How you actually used it
The interface was deliberately plain: a row of tabs, one per tool, and a drop zone. You pick a tool, drop your file, set whatever option that tool needs — a page range, a password, a compression level — and download the result. There was nothing to learn and nothing to configure beyond the task in front of you.
Why it mattered
Version 1 proved the core premise: you don’t need to hand your documents to a stranger’s server to get everyday PDF work done. A modern browser is powerful enough to do all of it on your own device. That release is what convinced me the project was worth maintaining and expanding — which is exactly what the next version did.
If you want the technical side of how this works under the hood, I wrote a separate piece on how Moriaki PDF works. And for everything new since version 1, see what’s new in version 2.